This is a whole lot of junk that just rips apart Swanson's bike army. In fact I only played it twice and beat Greg both times so I spent 2 months painting it up and finished 3 days before the tourney. They look nice.

Game 1

Zack was playing Decurion Necrons with the canoptek harvest and destroyer cult. The game was objective farming. Starting on turn 2 your objectives would be 1pt each and your opponents would be 2 pets each. Tally scores from turn 2 on. I went first in the Vanguard deployment and dropped the pod with Assault Centurions and chaplain into his backfield near an objective. Shooting did 13 wounds and removed 7 models. Zack was not happy to lose so much. I thought it wasn't a big deal, but then I didn't understand how resilient the Decurion could be and I quickly learned I had actually done well. The best part was the Castigator peering over all the terrain and blowing the spider back to the sands to stop reanimate on protocols on the wraiths. Zack counter attacked by bringing the wraiths back to take on the assault centurions. This fight lasted 2 mile phases and I killed two wraiths before dying. This did buy me valuable time to shoot his army some more and push into one of his objectives.

Highlights

Thunderfire a killed about 1 unit a turn which was nice, except turn 3

Turn 3 a 3-man tomb blade squad made 13 armor + reanimate on saves from the Thunderfires to remain unscathed.

The Destroyer Lord and Castigator battled for 3 assault phases before killing each other (yeah for D explosions)

Dreadnought taking 4 assault phases to do any damage to 3 destroyers in close combat.

Assassin trudging up the board for 4 turns all alone, assaulting a 10-man warrior squad and dying in close combat on the first turn.

In the end I was able to pull out the win as I held one of his objectives for several turns and allowed me to pull into the lead on the primary.

Gary brought 3 Hive Tyrants, 2 Crones and 2 more shooting flying monsters along with three 10-man gargoyle units that just keep coming back on a 4+. I looked at my list and wished I had painted up those 3 Stalkers.

I went first in vanguard deployment and nightfight. The game was kill points and we had about the same number of kill points, however his gargoyles would keep coming back for me to kill. Gary put his 3 Tyrants as far in his corner as possible and had a venomthrope to give them a 2+ cover. I couldn't reach them with the Thunderfires, but I could reach a Tervigon who couldn't squeeze into the corner. My initial salvo from the Thunderfires deviated off the Tervigon and onto his Warlord Hive Tyrant. Oh my. I got three wounds through and finished him off with the long range fire from the Devastator Centurions. Unbelievably lucky on my part and could never happen again in a million years, but I'll take it for this game.

Turn 2 I couldn't hurt anything which was fitting given how lucky I was in turn 1. All the flyers came in on turn 2 and headed right for the Thunderfires to exact revenge. The Thunderfire cannons resiliency paid off and nothing died. I then started to pick on the gargoyle units that dropped down all over the place to get easy kill points. I gave up on trying to down the flyers and sent the Castigator into Gary's backfield to get kill points. The horde killing abilities of the Castigator really paid off and I was racking up kill points. The Thunderfires really shined through easily killing a ground unit a turn and clearing the path for the Castigator to get to juicy targets.

Highlights

Nailing warlord and first blood with a lucky scatter

Popping another Tyrant who landed with the 3 Devastator centurions through 4+ cover and 5+ feel no pain

Castigator killing 14 blocking termagants in one melee round with deflagrate attacks and then stomping the rest away.

Assassin mishaping in a drop pod, getting placed in my far corner, running up for 3 turns before getting sniped by a heavy venom cannon one turn away from reaching the tyrants.

Elliot brought Eldar, nuff said. I faced off against a ton of jet bikes, 3 units of warp spiders, 2 farmers and a wraithknight. The game was cumulative objective farming and relic all combined with a dawn of war deployment. I deployed second a waited for my beating. Stupidly I reserved most everything.

Elliot began by shooting at the Thunderfire cannons who were in reinforced cover. I lost two models, 4 wounds and rolled an 11 on morale to run off the board. Oh my. I responded by podding in the Assassin next to his telepathy farseer and proceeding to shut off all his powers, decimate his unit in psychic shooting and deliver a wound through perils of the warp with a grenade. The now leadership 7 Farseer then failed morale and ran off the board. Not to be outdone another bike squad ran away from Centurion Devastator shooting and I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Elliot then dropped in his Wraithguard with d-scythes next to my Castigator and he was no more. The Wraithknight was amused with my assassins abilities and proceeded to punk him in close combat. Spiders dropped all around my Devastator centurions and killed two of them.

My reserves were bad, but it didn't matter at that point. My only hope would have been to take advantage of the carnage the Assassin caused on turn 1, but by turn 2 that was to late.

Highlights

The Assassin finally earned his money. To bad the rest of the army didn't.

Thunderfires failing morale despite having a 10 leadership due to my warlord trait.

Eldar jet bikes failed a total of 3 morale checks in 2 turns which was nice.

This was going to be an uphill fight no matter what, but my stupid deployment snuck me before the game started. I even had a reroll dice from bringing a bag of candy that I didn't use on the Thunderfire cannons which could have saved them. Oh well.

I came home to look for Coteaz to add to the Thunderfire cannons to keep units from deep striking to close to them. Then I looked for my 3 Stalkers to try to take out flying Tyranids. Then I looked for .... Oh who am I kidding. I can't change the whole list because of one tourney.